UK Basketball: Anybody Up For A Road Trip?

When the going gets tough, the tough get going! Overheard at the Joe Craft center this morning as the Cats prepared to leave for Portland, and having heard that Enes Kanter will not be making it onto the floor on the Maui Road Trip one player said, ” This is ridiculous!” another said, “What are we gonna do?” To which Jorts and DeAndre replied, “Road Trip!” OK, maybe that is only in the movies, but you get my drift. It is time for the Cats to suck it up and take The Greatest Show In The NCAA on the road. Are we ready? Do we have what it takes to go to Maui and walk away with the whole thing?

Well, we could fight this battle by conventional means, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. So, no, we will not be conventional. Cap’n Cal is going to load the guns with everything in the arsenal, point them in the direction of the enemy and fire. And we are either going to come back to Lexington with a trophy in hand, or there are going to be a lot of bodies scattered all over the island in the quest for it.

We have the talent to win this whole thing, that is not the question. The question is how will the newest class of Calipari’s Day Care students react to the pressure of tournament play? How will they handle jet lag, hostile playing environments and teams of equal talent bumping and pushing and shoving their way around the court? I have to admit that I am excited and scared all at the same time about how the Cats are going to handle a lot of growing up all at once.

The Portland game will be the first challenge, with the Cats not finishing that game until way past their normal bed times. Of course I am not allowing for the Jones factor, that magical quality that comes out in special players when they get in front of their hometown crowd. Assuming the Cats fans travel as they usually do, I am betting that Terrence Jones is going to have a lot of friendly faces in that crowd. Then we have to face those teams in Maui that are not going to go away quietly, starting with Oklahoma ( get a copy of the bracket here). Then we face the possibility of either Washington or Virginia, and move on from there in whatever direction we go. Cal tells us to prepare for the possibility of coming back from this road trip 1-4. The very thought makes me cringe, but it is possible. There are a lot of really good teams out in Maui, and they would like nothing more than to send us packing as an early Christmas present. So we do our very best to make a good showing out there and be happy with anything better than a .500 record.

I honestly expect the Cats to do well in this tournament, but anything can happen. We are going to need all that Josh Harrellson and Eloy Vargas have. Jones cannot carry the load inside all by himself. I hope all that practice against Enes will pay off. Brandon Knight needs to have his coming out party somewhere along the way. Miller and Liggins simply need to lead, both on and off the court. DeAndre has been hard on himself lately, even in the face of praise from Cal, good for him. He knows that he is one of the linchpins for this team, and he expects more from himself. We need that kind of an attitude and approach from him and some others. Defense must continue to improve, and we need those 3 pointers to fall from the heavens each and every game. If this team plays to it’s potential every night, Maui is ours. Including the possibility of that mega game with Michigan State. This team cannot be defended when it is hitting the 3 the way they have been lately. The DDMO is starting to take hold, and Cal’s willingness to adjust his schemes and set plays as he goes just proves that the talent to do a lot of things is there for the moulding. We have to be wary of fatigue, cramping up, and attitudes slipping as tough games lie ahead. But Cal seems to have those things under control.

So, are we ready for this road trip? That matters not. It is here and we have to go. In his usual way of making things out to be the next Armageddon, Cal has everyone convinced that we are facing the next Blitzkreig over the next 7 days, and I guess that is possible. But my bet is that the Cats take their own aerial assault to Pearl Harbor and make something magical happen.

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